Someone had said, if you look deeper within any subject, you would find mathematics. And that’s a thought that gives a profound sense of relief and peace… the idea of a universal language, of big explanations; of global emancipation and grand solutions, as opposed to “weak thought”, postmodern complacency, and the idea of the inevitability of the inability to ever understand ourselves.
So, as we approach the end of another chaotic year and enter the next – it always feels like finding ourselves at the end of a voyage in newly discovered lands… (We do thrive on symbolisms, and the ones associated with the passage of time tend to be more powerful than others…) its time to reflect, ponder and anticipate… and if we were able to do it in a more powerful language perhaps, we might just be more accurate.
Well, the last two stanzas in their entirety rest on two presumptions – the first one being that mathematics existed before humanity did and that it is axiomatic and is capable of analyzing all human interactions, in a completely objective fashion.
And the second one being – although Mathematical philosophy is equally dialectical as others and its origin and development is a part of the historical processes of human interactions, it is still a more powerful language than others.
There are these lines in Neruda’s poetry, which say…
“What we know is so little,
and what we presume is so much
and we learn so slowly
that we ask and then we die….”
And so we asked… the man who speaks the language of mathematics so eloquently – finding such fantastic patterns in the colours and sounds of the world, forming such transparent lines between the flutter of the wings of a butterfly and the rising of oceans, between musical notes and stock market indices, between football jerseys and prime numbers, between the flight of birds and our future, measuring and counting all kinds of things… from the speed of neutrinos to the number of sand grains on earth… unlocking the keys to the wisdom of the bees and the cicadas and violence and love… Marcus Du Sautoy. He is perhaps the most celebrated face of Mathematics today – its poster boy – who took over from Sir Richard Dawkins as the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, and is the Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, author of many books, presenter of some of the most watched television series on the mysteries of Science and numbers, playwright, actor, musician, and a footballer!
So we asked him, in the most freewheeling interview ever, about almost everything under the sun that could be asked within the constraints of subjectivity and time – about love, war, literature, poetry, numerology, climate, comedy, education, economics, music, elections, butterflies, and storms…
And now, we leave you with the mind of a mathematician – in solitude and in multitude. And someone has also said mathematicians are also the most warm-hearted people…
The proof of either presumption lies somewhere in there or maybe not… either way, it’s the best New Year present that we could think of giving you, in this year of Maths, the 125th year of the birth of the infinite mathematician, Ramanujan.
